Mr. Speaker, the last few weeks, the last few minutes we have heard assertions from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle that are false and designed to mislead and frighten the American people. They claim that we allowed the Protect America Act to expire, that we are dark for 27 days.

Ken Wainstein, the Assistant Attorney General of the United States, and the Bush Administration admitted that because of the provisions of the group warrants in the Protect America Act that had gone on for a year, didn't change anything. It is still in effect, number one.

Number two, we forget, this House passed a FISA updating modernization bill in November, on November 14. We called it the RESTORE Act. We waited for the Senate to pass a bill so we could go to conference and compromise on it. When did they pass a bill? Not in November, not in December, not in January. Because of Republican foot-dragging, they didn't pass the bill until February, mid-February, three months after we passed the bill here, and two days before we went home for a week for the Presidents Day recess.

The President came out and said it's up to the House to pass the Senate bill, no questions asked. But there are a lot of questions about the Senate bill. Maybe our bill isn't perfect, but their bill is far from perfect, and our bill is closer to perfect than theirs.

So then we said, well, if you don't want, because catastrophe will happen, according to the President and the Republicans if we go home without passing the Senate bill, we will extend the Protect America Act for 3 weeks until we can come back and deal with this. Who voted it down? The Republicans. They said, no, don't extend it. The President said he would veto an extension.

So let's not hear any remarks on this floor from that side about how we are dark because the act expired. It expired because they made it expire. They voted against a 21-day extension that we could have renewed if necessary until we got this all figured out. So let's not hear any less-than-honest assertions about we are dark and we are unprotected and it is the Democrats' fault.

Mr. Speaker, we have a very good bill here. It gives the intelligence community every single tool they need and every tool they say they need. How does it differ from the Senate bill? In two ways. One, it provides for some closer judicial supervision, because while we are giving the intelligence community the tools they need to wiretap on American citizens, on people who are not American citizens, we have to make sure that our constitutional rights and liberties are protected so that this country, which we have all defended, and we all want to defend, remains worthy of being defended by defending our own liberties.

Remember why we enacted protections in the first place, because the Administration at the time wiretapped Martin Luther King. We don't want that to happen again by a future Administration. And so we must protect our civil liberties.

We are told that telecom companies, if we don't provide retroactive immunity, they won't cooperate in the future, we won't get their help. Number one, that is an aspersion on their patriotism. Number two, they can be compelled to do so under court order. And number three, they have always had immunity. They have it now. All they have to do to have immunity is to have a request from the Administration that says: A, we need your help; B, you are not violating the law if you do what we ask; and C, you don't need a court order. If they get that request, whether those assertions are true or not, as long as the Administration says we need your help, what we are asking you to do won't violate the law, and you don't need a court order, they are absolutely immune. And they have always had this immunity.

So why do they need retroactive immunity, they say because the Administration won't permit them to go to court and say we were asked for help, we gave that help. We have this request and we got the legal assurances because the Administration won't let that go to court because it says it will violate State secrets.

So what does our bill do? It says you can go to court under secret procedures to protect the security of the State secrets, but you can assert your defense in court and get the case thrown out if you at least got the assurance by the Administration in advance, which is all the law required. If you didn't get that, then you have no respect for the privacy rights of Americans and you don't deserve immunity. Even if we gave retroactive immunity for the future to the telecom company that helped us next week, they still have the same requirements for immunity. And if they wanted to go to court to assert them if someone sued them, they would still have to go to court and say the same thing. So you are dealing with a one-time fix.

Retroactive immunity takes it out of the courts and says Congress shall say to American citizens you're wrong, you can't protect your constitutional rights in court, you're right. That is a duty for the courts, not for Congress. That is the basis of the protections of all of our rights. The Senate bill goes the wrong way. We protect the telecom companies and protect our liberties. It is the right way to go. I urge adoption of this rule.